


Money Honey

by paintedrecs



Series: Painted Landscapes (tumblr fics) [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Businessman Derek, College Student Stiles, Derek Hale & Sheriff Stilinski Bonding, Derek With Dogs, Except he's an officer living in the city in this AU, Irresponsible Decisions about Money, M/M, Musician Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek's a moderately well off businessman who has a soft heart, a rapidly emptying wallet, and a serious problem with dogs, panhandlers, and life in general.</p><p>Until Stiles comes along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Money Honey

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr as a twitterfic transfer](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/148336490675/id-like-to-revisit-a-twitterfic-i-wrote-back-in).

Derek Hale's a moderately well off businessman who walks by the same set of panhandlers every day because he always gets focused on the stresses of his job and forgets to try a different route. 

He’s had a soft heart since he was a kid; he always rescued wounded baby animals in the forest and tried to patch them up, much to his mother’s dismay. So he can’t say NO when the lady on the corner tells him she can’t feed her twelve children and the man next to her hears the exchange, sees Derek pulling out cash, and counters with his _fifteen_ children. It seems like a lot, but Derek came from a pretty big family - all the dozen plus kids constantly running around the Hale property might not have been his mom’s, but they were related to him and a part of his childhood that he misses.

That nostalgia - it’s lonely in the city, so far away from the Hale House in woodsy Beacon Hills - leads him to pull more bills out of his wallet, asking the kids’ names and listening politely to the man’s stories. It also leads to others in the area catching wind of his generosity and taking advantage of it. Some are much younger, so they don’t have kids of their own, but they inevitably have ailing parents or grandparents or aunts, or younger siblings back home who can’t even afford to eat cereal. The mere thought of that twists something up inside of Derek, and he passes over an extra few bills and tells them to buy something sugary and fun, too, like Lucky Charms. 

Time passes, and all these devoted, destitute families are steadily draining his pocketbook. To be entirely honest, Derek’s starting to get a little antsy about it, but he can’t stop now…not when they all _rely_ on him, and gosh, he doesn’t lead a terribly lavish life, so he doesn’t really _need_ all this money. It’s what he keeps telling himself every time he hesitates while reaching into his battered old bag, which Laura had given him when he’d moved to the city. “For all your important papers,” she’d said, looking as teary-eyed as his mom, which had made him feel awkward and sad until she’d punched him on the shoulder and everything shifted back to normal.

He talks to her, still; he talks to all his family, and sometimes he wonders why he’s staying here, earning a paycheck he doesn’t care that much about. He doesn’t talk about that during the calls, though, or about the emptiness he has to tamp down each time he hangs up. He’s got a decent life, as things go, and he sees his family on holidays, and so what if he doesn’t really have time to date? He has other interests. There’s no reason for him to feel lonely. 

Enter Stiles.

Stiles is a newcomer, at least to this area; he’s in school, but he picks up some extra cash as a street musician when he’s not in class. The city’s expensive, so any additional infusion of money helps, especially since he’s determined not to move back in with his dad, and eventually he’d like to stop sharing a shitty two(ish)-bedroom apartment with three shittier roommates. 

But the truth is, he enjoys the rush of it as much as anything. He loves when a crowd gathers, when people sing along to the songs they know, when little kids break away from their parents to do little jigs on the sidewalk. He works for every penny: he’s not begging, and he’s certainly not a charity case.

But when he pops up on Derek’s route, all Derek sees is the open instrument case, with coins and bills scattered across its velvet surface. Derek’s lips turn down, but he pulls out his wallet. He painfully extracts a $20 bill and slowly, sadly drops it in, thinking longingly about the nice lunch he’d planned to spend it on. It’s the nice thing to do, though; this new guy didn’t specifically _ask_  him for money, but he’s tall and lean and hungry-looking, and he’s _here_ , isn’t he? All anyone ever wants from Derek around here is his money, and if that’s what he can contribute to make a few people happier and healthier, he’ll do it.

Stiles thinks it’s pretty awesome and calls his best friend at the end of the day to exclaim over his success. Scott lives with his girlfriend and works long shifts at the local animal shelter and worries about Stiles, so Stiles makes sure to give him every last detail about the hot businessman who gave him $20 every time he walked by. And he’d walked by a _lot_ , always with money in his outstretched hand.

It doesn’t take long for the shine to wear off, though: Stiles realizes that the guy does this every day. For every person along that particular stretch of street. Stiles initially figures he’s some ludicrously wealthy guy who could drop a thousand bucks on a round of drinks without noticing it, or - whatever fancy businessmen do at night, _he’s_  certainly not from any type of background that’d know. 

As soon as he starts watching more carefully, he realizes he’s gotten entirely the wrong impression. He sees the guy’s improbably attractive face get more and more pinched and more and more worried as time passes, and he begins wondering how deeply the guy’s scraping at his bank account to fund these people with their fake-as-hell sob stories. 

Stiles has been around for long enough now to hear them talking when they’re waiting for promising marks to come along. He knows for a fact that most of the younger ones take transit in from the suburbs to make money they won’t have to beg off their parents. They usually pop a couple blocks over to spend it on weed before they head home, although a few of them have been talking about saving up for some new video game consoles that honestly sound pretty sweet. Stiles has been more jealous than anything, and figured it’s none of his business if people have _that_  much money to burn on a crowd of opportunistic little shit-heads.

But now that he’s actually paying attention, he can’t push back the overwhelming urge to save His Handsome Businessman from the relentless greed. True, there are a few genuinely homeless people, including Hank, but the next time HHB stops to talk to him, Stiles shamelessly eavesdrops and finds out Hank’s been spinning an elaborate story about fifteen starving kids. 

The actual number of kids Hank has? ZERO. He doesn’t even have a damn dog to feed.   

Stiles does what he always does when he can’t get a handle on his emotions: he hops on the subway and rings at Scott’s building until he’s let in. 

It doesn’t take long before Stiles veers off his Path of Righteous Indignation into painstakingly detailed descriptions of HHB. He’d meant to explain how awful it was to see the worrylines creasing HHB’s forehead, but he gets sidetracked describing his oddly eloquent eyebrows; his cheekbones, and the way they’d gotten even more striking when he’d shaved his beard; his hair, so thick and dark it was almost like it soaked up the sunlight - maybe _that_  was why it sometimes hurt to look at him for too long -

Scott tilts his head and interrupts with, “Wait, I think I know him.”

Stiles stops. “How? You’re never on that side of town.”

“Remember when Princess had seven puppies and the shelter was already at its peak capacity, and no one could take care of them, and I had to call around to our emergency contacts?”

Stiles thinks back and nods. Scott’s talked before about the “emergency foster parents” the animal shelter has on file for situations where they can’t handle certain animals. They don’t have to use them often, but it’s a useful safety measure. 

“He’s one of them. Derek - Derek Hale. He’s an awfully nice guy, even though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. He took all the puppies home until we could find people to adopt them; he ended up keeping the runt of the litter, this weak little girl we’d initially thought wasn’t going to make it, even though he already had four dogs at home. We talked for a bit while he was dropping the rest off, and he said he’s got a bad habit of going to pet adoption fairs and can’t ever seem to say no to wagging tails.”

Stiles gapes at him. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” he yelps. “You too, Scotty? I just finished telling you how all these people take advantage of him, and you’re telling me you’ve been doing the _same damn thing_?” 

Scott shrugs uncomfortably. "I asked all the questions we’re supposed to! He said it was totally fine; he’s got the money and the space for them. He even joked about how he doesn’t need sleep…” He trails off at the sight of Stiles’s glower; that particular expression only comes out when he is truly angry, which doesn’t happen often with Scott.

This is clearly A Serious Situation. 

***

The next time His Handsome Business- _Derek_  tries to give Stiles money, Stiles slaps the case closed and stands up. 

"Dude, stop,” he says, waving away the money, making intense eye contact with Derek, who’s standing frozen in confusion. “Just stop. I have no idea what the fuck your friends or your family are doing, letting you wander around falling for this shit, but you need an intervention. I’m taking you to lunch. _I’m paying_.”

Derek doesn’t resist as much as Stiles had expected, and Stiles sits him down in a nearby cafe and buys him a sandwich (what, it’s not like _he’s_  rich), and lectures him on money management.

“But the children,” Derek argues weakly, his hand twitching toward his wallet when the server sets their check on the edge of the table.

Stiles isn’t that easily distracted; he slaps it away, maintaining angry eye contact with Derek as he slams his credit card down. What’s a little extra debt, after all? Some things are worth it.

Derek puts his hands back in his lap and opens his mouth again, ready to repeat the stories he’s been gathering every weekday. 

“THE KIDS ARE LIES!!” Stiles erupts, his eyes alight with a fire Derek can’t look away from. 

After some discussion, and some disheartening doses of reality, Derek agrees to knock it off. It’s more of a relief than he wants to admit; he’s always been fairly gullible, but he’s not _stupid_. He’d guessed at least some of his regulars were taking advantage of him. The issues were that he couldn’t prove it - and he didn’t want to be the asshole who pulled back funds from someone who actually needed it - and that he’s always had trouble wrangling his way out of situations once he’s gotten too tangled in them. He’s grateful to Stiles for going out of his way to help him out, and giving him the leverage to break free of a habit he’d never meant to form.

The bigger problem is that since Stiles makes him change his route and won’t let him hand over money anymore, Derek can’t figure out how to see him again, or how to ask Stiles out. The few times he tried, Stiles glared at him until he went away. (Stiles thought he was trying to make him into a charity case again. Derek really, really wasn’t.) 

“Hey listen,“ Stiles finally sighs, when he sees Derek hovering at the end of the block, looking forlorn. He shoos him away from Hank, who’s gotten more aggressive in his panhandling since losing Derek’s income. This situation can’t go on forever; he figures Derek’s the kind of guy who’s likely to start backsliding if he doesn’t have a project he believes in, so Stiles has been trying to think of alternate solutions. "If you really want to do some good for the world or whatever, I can give you my dad’s number, okay? He’s a cop. He’s been with his precinct for a long time; he knows all the programs that actually help people out, and he can get you in touch with the right places to do your part for humanity.”

“Do you still live with him?” Derek asks hopefully, wondering if he’s finally gotten his hands on Stiles’s number. 

Stiles snorts. “No; sometimes I wish I did, though.” He scrawls down his dad’s number while telling Derek about his awful roommates, and the latest shit they’ve been pulling to make his life miserable.

Derek deflates a little, but he calls Stiles’s dad anyway, who turns out to be a somewhat older, kind, grounded sort of guy. Officer Stilinski chuckles when he finds out how Derek got his number, and asks if Derek _actually_  wants to do this. 

It turns out that yeah, Derek does enjoy working at after-school programs and with other community outreach efforts. Plus, Officer Stilinski calls him “son” and treats him like he matters, and as much as he loves his mom and sisters, Derek hasn’t had a dad in a really long time. It fills an ache he hadn’t realized he’d been harboring, and keeps him from missing the rest of his family quite as much.

And if he occasionally asks about Stiles - what he’s doing, who he’s dating, if he has enough money - it’s subtle, right? Stilinski patiently answers his questions and doesn’t do the Stiles-patented eyeroll _too_ often, and eventually starts inviting Derek over for family dinners, because he’s a good man, and Stiles keeps asking his own “subtle” questions about the time he spends with Derek.

It turns out Derek’s been doing really well. He’s bright and happy at each of the Stilinski family dinners. He’s still entranced by Stiles, of course - how could he not be? - but he has so many things to talk about now. He barely ever mentions work, mostly spending the evenings talking about Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, a trio of 18 year olds he’d met and bonded with during his volunteering efforts. They’ve become another mini family in the city, poking more holes in the solitude he’d gotten so used to wrapping around himself. They mean a lot to Derek, and he to them. (He and Stilinski - “Call me John, son” - had gotten in a few near-arguments about them - “ _No_ , Derek, you cannot adopt them. They’re technically adults. Aw geez, Stiles was right about you.”) 

When he runs out of those stories, Derek also enjoys telling them about his dogs. He’d accidentally adopted another one, a beast of a creature that has no wolf in it but _looks_ like it, so the owners had gotten scared and dropped it at the shelter. No one else would adopt it, but Derek had inevitably fallen in love. 

“You can meet him!“ he tells Stiles eagerly when he expresses interest. He’s flushed and happy and Stiles wants to kiss him. He settles for saying yes, sure, he’d love to swing by Derek’s place to check out his dog.

"He’ll look like he wants to bite your head off, but he’s got the kindest heart,” Derek reassures Stiles at the door. 

“I know what that’s like,” Stiles says, looking at the sharp lines of Derek’s cheekbones, his intimidating eyebrows, his muscular build. 

Derek’s absolutely thrilled that Stiles finally agreed to come over. _He loves my dogs_ , he thinks and invites him back. 

It takes a half dozen Not Dates for Stiles to explode again and make a move, blurting, “JUST KISS ME, YOU ASSHOLE,” in the middle of a quiet, ridiculously romantic evening at Derek’s.

“Oh,“ Derek says, looking up from setting the table - with electric candles, since real ones are dangerous with that many dogs. "I didn’t-oh, okay,” he says, and lets Stiles push the utensils out of his hands and press him against the table. 

“We’re going to have to train the dogs to stay out of the bedroom,” Stiles says later, panting against his lips. “I mean, I like them, but _jesus_ you have a lot of dogs. I swear a new puppy pops up every time I come over." 

"They’re not all mine,” Derek says. “Not permanently, anyway. Your friend Scott says-" 

Stiles silences him. He doesn’t want to hear about Scott right now. 

They don’t talk about much for the rest of the evening, but when they do, it’s about things that really matter, secrets murmured in the darkness of Derek’s bedroom.

***

Stiles figures trading his awful roommates for a half dozen dogs and Derek is a pretty great bargain, all around. But he puts his foot down when Derek sneaks out his checkbook and tries to pay for his last year of university. 

"I’m not your charity case,” he reminds him, his jaw tightening, wanting to punch Derek in the face with his mouth. 

“I know,” Derek says softly. “I’m not trying to save you. You’re the one who saved me.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com), or writing way too many [twitterfics](https://twitter.com/paintedrecs).


End file.
